Workplace Revenge Stories
Work sucks. Whether it's an annoying co-worker, rude customer, or tyrant of a boss, there's always someone there just trying to drain the joy out of the day. But every once in a while, the opportunity for vengeance presents itself.
And one thing is for sure: whether it's simply petty or absolutely brutal, either way...it's satisfying, just like these stories.
1. The Devil’s In The Details
I worked for an architect who never attended to detail and had a load of failures as a result. On the day I refused to give the go-ahead on a design that I knew would fail—because of "unimportant" details—I was fired. The last thing I had to do was supervise the printing of company letterheads, business cards, and A0 drawing sheets. They were supposed to say, "McDonald, Sweet and Partners, Chartered Architects". At the last minute, I chose vengeance.
I altered the proofs to say, "McDonald, Sweet and Partners, Chartered Artichokes". Of course, not being a "detail" person he approved the proofs, and thousands got printed.
Freepik,nakaridore
2. Clean Up In Aisle Five
I previously worked at a pet store for a few years. One pet peeve (ha) I always had was that customers who brought their dogs in would almost always leave any of their dog's poop and not bother to pick it up.
However, worse than that were the customers who saw their dogs take a dump and then run to get me and ask me to clean it up. Once a customer was walking (dragging) his dog over by our fish wall. The dog at one point starts taking a dump and the customer sees this and continues to drag his dog down the entire side of the fish wall.
I approached him and said "You need to clean that up sir. I have some paper towels and cleanup spray in my podium that you can use". The customer looks at me, then down at his dog, and "My dog didn't do that, I was watching him the whole time".
The guy had the audacity to walk away. So now I am super angry at this point and my co-worker and I clean up the line of poop by the fish wall and then stuff it into a plastic bag. My next move was brilliant. We handed the bag over to our cashier and told him to make sure to put it in the customer’s bag when the time came.
I watched as he did so later, and I'll admit that gave me some sick sense of satisfaction.
3. The Magic Formula
I used to have to report website usage, ROI, and all sort of statistics for a bunch of different sites. I built a cool mother of a spreadsheet in which you only input a few numbers and it would calculate just about everything the company would need.
It was a bit too complicated for my boss to understand, yet he would take it to clients and brag that he made it.
That ticked me off. Then, after a while, he realized that the spreadsheet was all he needed, and he could use my paycheck to buy a new house. He laid me off. I told him he might need help with the spreadsheet, but he said he was smart enough. Sobefore I left, I made sure to make him eat his words—I changed a single formula in the spreadsheet and had a good laugh about the reports it spat out. They made no sense at all anymore.
4. Getting Off The Roof
I was about 18 and working doing residential roofing for a summer job. I had never installed clay or tile shingles before, so my boss told me to watch one of the other guys for a few minutes to get the hang of it.
No less than two minutes later, he started screaming (literally screaming; the guy had anger issues) asking why I was standing around and not working. So I grabbed some tiles and started putting them down.
Since I still had really no idea of what I was doing, I, of course, shattered the first two tiles I tried to shoot down. My boss came over and started screaming at me again for breaking tiles. But that's not even the worst thing he did— he then proceeded to PUSH ME OFF THE ROOF! Granted the fall was only about 10 feet, but it still could’ve finished me. At that point, I was fuming mad and decided I was done with that jerk. As I was packing up my gear, I could hear him cursing me at the other guys on the roof.
As I was walking off of the job, I noticed this moron standing on one of the air hoses running from his nail gun to the air compressor on the ground. In one swift movement, I grabbed the air hose and yanked it hard toward the ground.
He came tumbling down off of the roof and landed in a pile. As I was getting into my Jeep, I heard him threatening to call the authorities on me.
The foreman came up to him and pointed out how foolish he would look when all of the guys on the crew clearly saw him stumble and fall off on his own. It was glorious to hear that freak ranting and screaming at all of us as I rode off.
I realize that I probably committed assault, but turnabout is fair play as far as I am concerned.
